That night, I was squished between Laurie and Henny, both of which were snoring off the marshmallows and hot chocolate. I couldn’t stop thinking of Bishop. Was he hungry? Was he lost and carless?
Did he miss me at all?
I rolled my eyes at that last part, already knowing the answer.
Bishop didn’t miss anyone.
For the rest of the weekend, I refused to think of him. It never snowed, but we still had fun. We went hiking with Laurie’s parents, ate steaks her dad grilled on the deck, and ate enough marshmallows to fear I may become one.
But something was still missing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bishop
I waited in my car.
When she walked by, I whistled.
Zara looked at my car, squinted, and then jogged over, the early Monday cold seeping in through my open window. Fog layered the road and she looked like a gothic figure approaching me.
“Want a ride?”
She looked down the road. “I kind of like walking in the fog. Makes me feel… surrounded.”
Alrighty then. “Here.” I took out thirty dollars and handed the three tens to her. “Look at me.”
She did, her eyes transfixed on the money.
“Spend it carefully. I mean it.”
She took it hesitantly, folding it and putting it in her pocket. “How come you’re nice to me?”
“Because I am you, kid.” I started my car. “See you later?”
Her wide eyes met mine. “Thank you, Bishop. I wish every boy was nice like you.”
Her comment sent a rush of ice and heat over me. The cold of sadness and the heat of embarrassment. “I’m not nice,” I grumbled.
She smiled a little. “Okay.”
I’d filled my gas tank last night on my way home from working two days nonstop with the youth hockey center. I’d taken two pucks to the groin and one to the chest. But I walked away with almost five hundred dollars. After dinner and gas and giving some to Zara, I had a little of four hundred left. I needed to start saving. I’d gotten in at midnight last night and sleeping hadn’t been good to me. Not to mention, my eye was tender, swollen, and black and blue from Ryles’ elbow during Friday’s practice.
And, as bad luck would have it, Ava and her two friends were hanging out around her car when I pulled into the student lot that morning. Seeing Ava wasn’t the bad part. In fact, seeing her didn’t feel bad at all. It was the way she immediately looked away, like she didn’t want to make eye contact with me. Maybe spending the weekend with normal people made her rethink this whole friendship thing.
Feeling like crap for no good reason, I disappeared into the crowd the first chance I got. People stared at my black eye and then gave me a few inches, so disappearing entirely wasn’t possible, but any chance at melting into everyone else’s shadow was a chance I had to take today.
I kept my eyes on my desk, ignoring her friend, who seemed keen on catching my eyes and giving me wiggles of her eyebrows. I kept my eyes on my tray at lunch. I tried to remember what it was like before Ava gave me those granola bars.
In our class together, she was polite and friendly. Basically, fake as frick. I took it for as many days as I could. On Wednesday, when she sat down, giving me a small, empty smile that didn’t touch her eyes, I snapped.
I slid my chair over to hers, so my knees pressed into her thigh. I put my hand on the back of her chair and leaned close, putting my lips by her ear. “What is your problem?”
“Mine?” she hissed, and the dam broke. “You’re the one ignoring me, all over again.” She shoved me off and met my eyes, the torment in hers raging. I was struck by how well she’d held it together and how poorly she was now. “I don’t want to be your friend at all if this is how it’s going to be.”
I was confused. She was the one sitting there every day pretending I wasn’t beside her. That’s what was going on. Had I messed up again? I fell back in my seat and met her eyes. “How has it been?”
She glared hotly. “Look, I know you like your space, so I give it to you. But I also think that maybe you just don’t like me around. So, then I really back off. I don’t know what to think, Bishop. That’s the problem.”
She’d summed up my state of mind entirely. I didn’t want to tell her anything close to the truth, but she obviously needed something. Hoping she was psychic obviously wasn’t working. I detested her for making me do this. I kept my voice low. “I’m not good at this, Ava.”
“This?” she said, picking that word of all the words out for a reason.
Because she didn’t know what this was either. The feeling of wanting to be around each other but not being able to say why.
“Being your friend.” I stressed the fact that things were different not just for me, but because it was her. She was different. “I’m not good at… feelings, or even knowing what to do with them.”
“You’re telling me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, but she was listening.
I absorbed her jab. “I just want to read your mind. It’d save us both the trouble.”
“I want to read yours, too,” she said quietly, like she’d tried for the past three days to guess my thoughts.
“Can we talk after school?”
“Don’t you have practice?”
“No. We have our first game on Friday, so Coach doesn’t want to tire us out or risk injury. Thursday will be rest day and then Friday’s game day. Will you come?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it, but once it was out, I was glad. “I’d, uh.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Really like if you were there. You know, if you want.”
“Why?” she asked, point blank.
I got the sense that I could answer her question one of two ways. Either the right way, the answer she wanted, or the wrong way, the answer she didn’t want. Only problem was, I didn’t know what the correct answer was! I went with the truth. “Because I want you there, Ava.”
Her posture changed. The stiffness melted to softness. I’d given her the right answer.
Relief coursed through me.
“Okay, Bishop. I’ll be there.”
She wasn’t going for herself. She wasn’t into the rough sport, but she’d go for me. Something about that made it easier to say the next thing that came out of my mouth. “I missed you.”
I studied her, holding my breath. Her eyelids fluttered, almost closing, before springing open and pinning me in place. She took even breaths like she wasn’t actually evenly breathing but wanted it to look that way.
Her hand shot out to settle on my knee. “I missed you, too,” she admitted in the frailest, most breakable tone I’d ever heard.
Her hand on my knee burned through the denim of my jeans. I wondered how she’d react if I put my hand on her knee. “You okay?” She was still breathing funny.
She blushed and nodded, taking her hand back and settling it on the desk top. “Where do you want to meet after school?”
Going back to her place would be a bad idea. She’d finagle me into another position I didn’t want to be in. “Why don’t we go eat something? My treat.”
She giggled a little. “You and food, I swear.”
“Besides hockey, it’s my favorite past time.”
When her giggle deepened at my joke, I decided I’d try and tell more of them. Just as soon as I figured out how.
Feeling better, I took out our project and we managed to put the final touches to it. It was due on Friday. And we’d earned the A. Every last line and stroke of Miss Barter’s red ink pen as she marked our papers were earned through sweat, granola bars, and tears.
“What happened to your eye?” she asked just as the bell rang.
“Practice last Friday.” It was yellowish and thankfully starting to fade. “I took an elbow.”
“Does it hurt?”
This of all things seemed to bother her. “No.”
She let that sink in, as if she’d worried about if I’d been in pain.
“Been
wondering?” I followed her toward the door. Also wondering why she cared. She was a nice person. But that answer was too easy. I wanted her answer to mean something more.
She groaned on our way out of the classroom in acute relief. “You have no idea how many times I wanted to ask.”
It bothered me that I pushed her away without even trying. To know it wasn’t even a conscious effort and yet I still found a way to keep her at a distance was unnerving. And scary. “Yeah, I have no idea,” I delivered dryly. “I’ll meet up with you at the parking lot?”
She clutched her textbook to her chest, giving me a tiny smile that was still somehow hugely shy. “Can’t wait.”
I stared at her back, not losing her in the crowd until she turned the corner. Can’t wait? What did that mean?
Scrubbing a hand down my face and wiping away even the threat of a smile, I got to class, too. I didn’t exactly want it to hurry by, but if I were impatient for later it was only about the promise of food. At least, that’s what I told myself as the final bell rang for the day and I was the first one out of my seat for the first time and out of the door in case the principal decided to lock us all inside forever.
“Watch yourself, Manfield,” someone sneered when my bag caught theirs.
I shot them a glare and the punk scurried off, hands raised in submission. Sometimes my height and reputation helped. Like clearing a way to the parking lot.
I put my hands in my pockets and slowed down, parking it against the side of Ava’s car for what felt like fifteen minutes. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she approached her car, giving me that same hugely small shy smile.
What was she shy about?
I figured I was scowling, so I changed my face.
She frowned, eyes widening in terror.
I gave up and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m starving,” I greeted.
“Is that your nice way of saying hurry up?” She toyed with her keys in her hand, staring up at me with her face open.
Before I got too occupied studying it, like the bow of her top lip and the smooth swell of her bottom lip, or how in the light of day her eyes were more liquid amber than rich honey, like they were in the dark, I stopped myself. “Follow me there?”
She unlocked her door. “Sounds good.”
I was admittedly in a bad place with her. I had an objective with this dinner. Get her to stop erring on the side of caution and accept that I was, in fact, not who she wanted me to be. But that maybe wasn’t a bad thing. I guess demanding she lower her expectations wouldn’t exactly help me personally, but it would help her.
“Interesting choice.” She eyed the sign above the Italian restaurant door curiously when we arrived.
“You don’t like it?” I didn’t typically have extra money to go anywhere else other than fast-food chains.
She shook her head. “It’s actually my favorite restaurant.”
“Pasta,” I mumbled as a lame excuse.
Truth was, Amore Eterno was one of the better restaurants in town. Large, comfortable, and the servings were enormous and worth it for the money. I was well aware that blowing money on a dinner wasn’t going to help me in the long run, but I didn’t see a way out of it. And plus, once I caught a whiff of someone’s alfredo as a waiter passed by, I was ravenous. Tired of eating stale, forgotten doughnuts and free cafeteria food.
Even though it was Friday, it wasn’t late enough in the day for it to be too busy yet. We were seated immediately in the middle of the restaurant in a booth.
The waitress was smiley. She smiled at Ava and then at me and kept on smiling as she took our drink orders. I guess her smiling was infectious because Ava was smiling now, too. I tried not to roll my eyes as I asked for ice-water and a cola. Ava got sparkling water. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.
When the waitress left, Ava laughed breathlessly. “It wouldn’t hurt you to smile back.”
I opened my menu. “It might.”
“Try it, Bishop. Smile at me.”
I lifted my eyes to see her. She looked so small in the large booth. Face adorably interested in my lack of smile. I kept my face the same. “No.”
She glared at me, her smile wavering. She kept it on her face, though, just to prove a point. “You smile right now or I’m going to do it our entire dinner and look crazy and get us kicked out of here before you get to eat anything.”
“Whoa,” I said, looking around carefully. “Don’t get crazy. I’m hungry, Ava.”
“Then you’d better smile.”
I was too hungry to risk her making good on her threat. I forced my lips up.
She moved back a little. “I said to smile, not show your teeth like a dog.”
I lowered them a little. “Better?” I asked, my words altered due to my freaking lips being raised for her benefit.
She tried not to laugh, but did so anyway, covering her mouth with her hand and shaking her head. “You are really horrible at this. Here, watch me.” She smiled slowly, like I hadn’t smiled ever in my life before.
I felt like an alien she met in the woods and brought home. And named him Bishop. “I know how a smile works, Ava.”
“You sure? Because you look like you’re being held captive and the kidnapper forced you to smile at a passerby so they wouldn’t recognize you.” She giggled harder, falling over in her chair. “Stop,” she gasped. “Stop smiling.”
Her laugh was so heavy and genuine my fake smile turned into a real smile. She stopped laughing suddenly and her lips popped open, and she looked like she was staring into the sun or something, the way she kept blinking her eyes.
“There. That’s a real smile.”
I dropped it. “Happy?”
She nodded soundlessly.
I returned to my menu. I wanted one of everything. When the waitress returned, she had the same dumb smile on her face, but she brought breadsticks, so I didn’t mind all that much this time. She took our orders. Ava got penne alla vodka with chicken parmesan and I got chicken cutlets and eggplant parmesan and a side of sausage and peppers.
“Do you need to see my ID?” Ava joked, starting to reach into her pocket.
The waitress laughed, probably hearing that lame joke ten times a day. “Nah, you look legal.”
“Really?” she said, frowning.
“No,” the waitress chuckled, taking off.
I grabbed a breadstick and shoved half of it in my mouth. And then the other half. And then I grabbed another.
Ava sat back, watching me eat with a raised eyebrow. “Can I have one, or are all of those just for you?”
I pushed the basket toward her. “Just one.”
She rolled her eyes and fisted two, giving me a teasing little dance shuffle in her booth. “I’m going to get fat hanging out with you.”
I shrugged, taking a drink of soda. “So.”
“So?” She snorted and grabbed another breadstick. “I did a report in health class sophomore year all about how people in love gain weight. Happy couples can gain ten to fifteen pounds in their first year of dating. It’s also a bit subconscious. If you’re with ‘the one’ then a bigger jean size shouldn’t matter.” She sat back, eyeing me. “Suffice it to say, my teacher thought I was being a smart aleck and gave me a D.”
“Were you?”
“Being a smart aleck? No. I thought it was interesting. We put a lot of attention on weight and stuff. It’s sad. Do you remember me in middle school?”
I’d been bounced around in Minnesota my entire life but hadn’t ended up in Duluth until I was ten or so. So, yeah, I remembered middle school. It was when my foster parents taught me that money was more important than love, the only reason they took me in. “Not really.”
“I remember you in middle school.”
“Really? How?” I could see Ava back then, but only through my child’s mind. Flashes of a face that was no longer the same as it was now. She was always cute to me.
“Because you weren’t like all the other boys. You were taller, quiet
er, and…” She broke off, looking away before returning her gaze to mine. “Cuter. Anyway, I was a little heavier than the other girls, and kids were mean to me. I grew up and the weight fell off, but I still remember what it felt like to wish people looked at here,” she patted her heart, “instead of everywhere else to get to know me. When I fall in love for the first time, I want to gain fifteen pounds. That way I know it’s real.”
“Cuter, huh?”
She groaned. “That’s what you take away from that entire statement?”
No, I took away far more from her admission than that single fact. Ava was too genuine for a guy like me, who had no real feelings but emptiness. “Cuter how?”
“Shut up, Bishop.”
“Like so cute you daydreamed about me?”
Her lips rose in the corner. “I never daydreamed about you.”
“Never?” I teased, fighting the lift of my own lips.
“Not back then,” she muttered, holding my gaze bravely even though her cheeks and neck were the color of strawberries.
I despised how pleased I was that she found me attractive. She wasn’t the first girl to say those things to me. In fact, until my reputation did it for me, I had to physically avoid most of the girls at school. But their compliments felt empty. Ava’s weren’t. Her comment made my guts tighten and I cleared my throat, but I never lost eye contact. “You daydream about decapitating me, that it?”
A breathless laugh emanated from her lips and if I wasn’t watching her so intently, I would have missed the loosening of her eyes from relief that I hadn’t discredited her statement. Because as luck would have it, I’d thought about her more than anyone else these past weeks.
“I don’t want to decapitate you anymore. Your face is the only part I like about you.”
I laughed in surprise, my mouth opening in shock at her comment. I grabbed the breadstick basket and slid it close to me. “That comment just earned you a breadstick demerit.”
The Rarity of Falling Page 9